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Topic: I really hate Italian bees (Read 3630 times)

Ok with that said my question is this: what is the best way to re-queen my 2 hives of Italian with Carniolans so that I have a higher acceptance with the 2 new queens. I read that with Russian's it takes up too 4 weeks and you need to use a queen excluder with the Italian queen in the bottom and the Russian in the top box. Do I have to use this method with the Carniolan too.

ok here is the nut shell you buy a queen it comes in a cage you take a frame out from the side of your hive place the queen in her cage. in the middle of the hive with the candy plug up close up the hive check in 10 days. easy squeezy.

Oh you guy's just don't know how much I hate these bee's. When I was hiving the package I took 5 hits and now that they have been in their hive for 2 weeks I cannot get within 10 feet of the hives without getting greeted by a couple of guard bees flying in my face. Then today when I was giving them some syrup I ended up getting stung twice and I use a top hive feeder.

Oh you guy's just don't know how much I hate these bee's. When I was hiving the package I took 5 hits and now that they have been in their hive for 2 weeks I cannot get within 10 feet of the hives without getting greeted by a couple of guard bees flying in my face. Then today when I was giving them some syrup I ended up getting stung twice and I use a top hive feeder.

Where did you get them from. Maybe you got some hot ones. Mine are usually very pleasant. I had a bear tear into some of them and It is the first time I ever got greeted by girls that had my number. When I put the hives back together I walked fifty yards away, stood there for a minute and they left me be. I am getting so comfortable with my baby girl, I believe Im going to start working without my jacket in a t-shirt veil and gloves. I really felt like a sissy when a customer stood next to me in street cloths while I transfered frames of bees into his box, and joked to his suited friend "do you think I should be wearing a suit) when he touched a patch of brood with his finger.

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I would have to say that you hate those bees. Now don't get me wrong, I prefer carneys and russians to italians but I have had hot bees that were russians and carney as well. The calmest bees I have look "Italian" but since they came from a swarm I have no idea what or where came from.

If they were from a package they may not be related to your queen at all. I would say, as harsh as it sounds, take your lumps cursing someone other than the queen for a couple of months until you get young bees from that queen replacing the bees that came in the package. Then you can decide whether or not to requeen in the fall.

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Just do the normal queen introduction routine. It would probably be helpful to remove the existing queen a day or three before the new one arrives so they'll realize they are queenless and be desperate to get a new one. I think the stories about difficulty with Russian introduction are overblown. I read a SARE report on Warmcolorsapiary.com and they found no difference in success by using extended introduction times.

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The hotness is not the Italian in them. As said above, if it's a new package, give it a few weeks. If not, requeen with Italian and they will be fine. You have an unusual situation that is not caused by the strain of bee you have.

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Thanks Idee, and Wisc. I had planned on doing it later in the summer anyways so I'll just wait and see how the summer goes and hopefully they will calm the "F" down. As for the time of day and weather it's always between 2 and 3 pm and it has been sunny and calm.

We have only tried carniolians and italians and both seem very gentle. They have to be since the hive is in our smallish back yard and I'm around it a lot for gardening. I've only got 1 sting I didn't earn. The carniolans are a little more protective.

My Italians are calm as can be and a joy to work (now). But I had to re-queen a packaged Italian hive the first year because of their extreme aggressiveness. Once I re-queened they were fine in about 4 weeks.

In my case, it was the queen genetics because they were fine when I hived the package. As her numbers grew and the package bees died off they became more and more aggressive.

My Italian bees have been extremely docile and in fact let me sit with 2 feet of their hive and watch their comings and goings. I'm a new beekeeper and have only introduced the bees to their hive and done 2 inspections, but so far, have not needed gloves or a veil.